I was at a reading tonight at Northwestern. The featured reader was fiction writer, Stuart Dybek. I "discovered" Dybek when I was a junior in college. By discover I mean, a teacher had his book, "The Coast of Chicago" on our reading list. Dybek is known as a Chicago writer. Pick up one of his short stories, and you feel like you are walking down a South Side street. He knows how to write the place and how to write the people our city includes.
I've wanted to see Dybek read for years. I came close a couple of times, but life, as it is want to be, got in the way. I came close to meeting him one time, just after I started in the MA program at Northwestern. He was teaching for a semester, before being offered a more permanent position, and we were both present at a "Welcome Back to School" function at "The Mansion" on campus. He was no more than fifteen feet from me the whole night, but I couldn't come up with a good enough reason to introduce myself. The "I love your work" thing just didn't seem appropriate.
Tonight, I got to hear him read a short story in progress, and I got to meet him. We spoke to each other, briefly, and as most writers I have met are, he was very engaging. He asked me questions about my work and history as a writer, and was very encouraging. He wrote, "To Cory--with all best wishes for your work--Stuart Dybek." I've had his book since 1991 and finally got the chance to have it mean more than it did over the past 18 years.
The reading also featured the opportunity for three students in the fiction program to share a portion of their work. They had to submit a short story to the co-director, and were selected as winning stories from an outside source. I've had the opportunity to read at an event like this, and it is very rewarding.
One of the stories, I felt, was really well written. It was a story about a woman who knitted. She knitted socks for her baby, she knitted him a blanket, and before he went off to college, she knitted him a sweater. When her son was old enough to have his own child, she attempted to continue the circle and knit socks for her new grandson. There's a line in this story that goes something like, 'AJ says you were always knitting something for him...' AJ was the son. While we don't really know enough about the relationship between the mother and AJ during a 10 minute reading, you assume that there was a close bond between the two. The thing AJ remembers is his mother's knitting.
The story is really about relationships, but it got me thinking about how my children will remember me. I think they might say that I liked to cook, more specifically, that I liked to barbecue. It's something they always look forward to when I do it. It was something Frederic requested on his last birthday. They might say that I liked to write, but they really have never read anything I have written.
The thing is, I don't have a hobby like knitting. I don't draw, I don't sew, I don't paint, I don't remodel. The most creative thing I do is write. They might say that I liked to write, but they really have never read anything I have written.
The story the girl read was really touching. It is still lingering with me. Makes me want to take up knitting.
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